Tony Benn RIP

Sadly, Tony Benn has died aged 88"After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?"-Tony Benn (1925-2014):

Wiki has this to say about him:

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 50 years and a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

Benn's campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, for a year he was the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979 he returned to the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.

Benn topped several polls as the most popular politician in Britain. He has been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office." After leaving Parliament, Benn became involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and was the President of the Stop the War Coalition for the last decade. He was a vegetarian from the 1970s until his death.

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Comments (2 of 2)

solidarity greetings to the Benn Family, while waiting at Dublin airport this morning. to catch a flight to London, for a confence which is been organised by the People's Assembly Against Austerity. 15 March 2014. Tony was the Coalition of Resistance chairperson. this was a political movement which brought together Community activists Trade Unions, people unemployed. people with disabilities. Communist Party of Britain working class people coming together to organise against the economic austerity in which the working Class of England taking a political stand, against the political economic agenda of privitisation, Capitalism IMF, ECB Troika
June 20 13 Westminister hall, London over 4,000 activists attended a meeting with a political Socialist agenda the message was loud and clear, that the political economic agenda set up by Capitalist, vultures dinosaurs was not going to be accepted by the working class to divide and rule that the political economic crisis was not brought about by the working class, that there will be peaceful resistance, standing together with our best weapon Class Conscious
another Comrade also died of a heart attack. Monday, or Tuesday 11 of March. Comrade Bob Crow. RMT trade union
if we can't stand together as political working class activists? then what does our condolences to the families of two comrades mean to them?

Sincere sympathy to Tony's four children, their families and all of his loved ones.

George Galloway in an interview on BBC (worth seeing) reminds us - and the interviewer - that Tony Benn's ideas were shared by the vast majority of people. As in Ireland, he was supported by the people on issues like the war in Iraq, public ownership of gas and electricity, NATO, nuclear weapons, etc. He was not an aristocrat, he says, yet he was "a prince among men, - the most gentle, most honourable, most filled with integrity".

I never met him but our family delighted in seeing him on our TV screen speaking our own thoughts with sincerity, power and conviction on all the big issues of our day.

Sadly, as in Ireland, democracy was not a winner. The sinister union of money, media and militarism used politics as puppeteers with elected politicians dancing on the end of their strings. Tony Benn refused to be a puppet as do a few honourable politicians here.